What an incredible story!

It all began with insects and an entomology graduate student's curiosity of how caterpillars turn into butterflies.

Bruce Hammock, now a UC Davis distinguished professor who holds a joint appointment with the Department of Entomology and Nematology and the UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center, remembers studying juvenile hormones in the UC Berkeley lab of John Casida back in the 1970s.

He and fellow graduate student Sarjeet Gill, now a UC Riverside distinguished professor emeritus,  co-discovered that a key enzyme in the metamorphosis degrades a caterpillar's juvenile hormone, allowing it to move from the larval stage into an adult insect.

So, for the past 50 years, Hammock has been researching inhibitors of soluble epoxide hydrolase or sEH. Those inhibitors alleviate chronic pain and inflammation in experimental animals. That research has led to experimental drugs that target such diseases as diabetes, hypertension (heart disease), Alzheimer's disease, and cancer.

Hammock's curiosity may lead to this: patients suffering from chronic pain and inflammation may be able to take a non-narcotic to alleviate that pain. 

Flashback to 2011: Hammock and UC Davis alumna and pharmacologist-toxicologist Cindy McReynolds co-founded EicOsis (pronounced eye-co-sis) in 2011.The Davis-based company recently completed testing a drug candidate in Phase 1 human clinical trials with their lead candidate EC5026 that inhibits sEH. “Inhibiting sEH increases the levels of naturally occurring inflammation resolving and pain-relieving compounds,” Hammock said. “The clinical trial showed no side effects.”

Fast Forward to Today: The company, EicOsis has been named one of Pepperdine Graziadio Business School's 2024 Most Fundable Companies. EicOsis s one of 18 recipients from a competitive pool of more than 2000 U.S. startups and notable in being a pharmacology company. The seventh annual list features companies from diverse sectors, including FinTech, AgTech, Healthcare, Industrial Automation, Consumer Packaged Goods, and Advanced Materials.

Hammock served as the first CEO of EicOsis and transitioned to scientific officer and chairman of the board of directors in 2023 when McReynolds, who holds a doctorate in pharmacology and toxicology from UC Davis, became CEO.

“At EicOsis, our mission is to develop new effective and safe oral medicines to help people suffering from pain and inflammation,” said  McReynolds. “We are committed to improving the lives of those suffering from pain, helping them feel themselves again.”

EicOsis derives its name from eicosanoid, “the major backbone of chemical mediators in the arachidonate cascade,” said McReynolds. “It symbolizes the epoxide group in chemistry, which is key to the anti-inflammatory chemical mediators and where the biochemical target called soluble epoxide hydrolase works.”

“Chronic pain affects 100 million Americans alone, and the increased prescription of opioids has led to a widespread public health emergency, the U.S. Opioid Crisis,” Hammock said. “Our company seeks to meet the unmet need for safe, non-addictive and effective pain medications that can help pain patients and fight the opioid crisis.”

In the United States alone, more than 81,000 people died of opioid overdose deaths in 2023, according to the Centers for Disease Control, and the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and more than 2.1 million people are addicted. The Helping to End Addiction Long-term Initiative, or NIH HEAL Initiative reports that the opioid epidemic In the 1990s, was "fueled by widespread overprescribing of opioids for pain management. This situation has led to significant reductions in appropriate opioid prescribing for pain at a time when safer and effective pain management strategies are not available to millions of Americans who live with pain.”

EicOsis won the “Sacramento Region Innovator of the Year” in 2019 in the medical health/biopharmaceutical category.

Long and Productive Road. It's been a long but productive road for Hammock, born in Little Rock, Ark., in 1947. Hammock earned a bachelor's degree in entomology magna cum laude, with minors in zoology and chemistry from Louisiana State University in 1969, and his doctorate in entomology/toxicology from UC Berkeley in 1973. A postdoctoral fellowship in biochemistry followed at the Rockefeller Foundation, Department of Biology, Northwestern University, Evanston, Ill.

He also served active duty as a medical officer with U.S. Army Academy of Health Sciences, San Antonio, where he witnessed the depths of acute and chronic pain.

"The frustration of seeing the effects of terrible pain coupled with the inability to effectively treat it has led me on a life-long quest to address pain and related illnesses,” said Hammock. “The study of this enzyme and the natural mediators it regulates has the added benefit of providing deeper understanding of diseases from heart failure to Alzheimer's which in turn is leading to new treatments.”

Since joining the UC Davis faculty in 1980, Hammock has taught a variety of subjects through the years, including biochemistry, endocrinology, toxicology, and pharmaceutical discovery and developmental biology.

As Wikipedia says: "Dr. Hammock continually moves between fundamental research and its application. Amongst his many research endeavors, he found a key hydrolytic enzyme that controlled insect metamorphosis and exploited this by developing transition state inhibitors that altered insect development. Then he used this hydrolytic enzyme in a transgenic viral insecticide. He found another hydrolytic enzyme important in insect development that also controlled key biological functions in mammals. His laboratory developed transition state inhibitors of this enzyme as well, which are used in human clinical trials where they reduce pain and inflammation. In addition, his lab pioneered immunoassay techniques for analyzing both humans and environmental exposure to pesticides and other contaminants. He continues as an internationally recognized figure in these fields for over five decades and has published over 1300 papers."

Highly honored by his peers, Hammock is a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, which honors academic invention and encourages translations of inventions to benefit society. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, a fellow of the Entomological Society of America, and the recipient of the Bernard B. Brodie Award in Drug Metabolism, sponsored by the America Society for Pharmacology and  Experimental Therapeutics. He directed the campuswide NIEHS Superfund Research Program, National Institutes of Health Biotechnology Training Program for almost 40 years and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) Combined Analytical Laboratory. 

Cindy McReynolds. “As co-founder, Cindy has played a key role building EicOsis into a leader in therapeutics targeting sEH,” Hammock said in a UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology article.  "Cindy's scientific insight, drive, and commitment ideally positions her to take EicOsis to the next level and builds on the vast body of science validating our approach. I know Cindy will continue to deliver great results for EicOsis and for a great many patients."

McReynolds received a bachelor's degree (1999) in animal science from UC Davis and a master's degree (2001) in animal science from Washington State University (WSU). Her career advanced from senior research associate, Celera (formerly Axys) in South San Francisco to senior associate scientist of Miikana, Fremont, to project coordinator of Arete Therapeutics, South San Francisco, to UC Davis researcher and EicOsis CEO.

At UC Davis, she served as the scientific program manager (2010-2017) for the Center for Integrative Toxicology, and as a graduate student researcher. She won a UC Davis Staff Assembly Citation of Excellence in Research in 2021. She earlier received the UC Davis 1999  Outstanding Senior Award, and several awards from WSU: the 2000 Dr. Erb Outstanding Graduate Student Award; the 2001 Teaching Assistant of the Year, and the 2001 Outstanding Graduate Student. While a graduate student, she was supported by a National Institutes of Health Chemical Biology Training Grant.

It's October and Arachtober: the month to celebrate spiders and other arachnids.

As arachnologists will tell you, arachnids are arthropods that include spiders, scorpions, ticks, mites, pseudoscorpions, harvestmen, camel spiders, whip spiders and vinegaroons. 

Arachnids need love, too, especially in October when spiders compete with ghosts, goblins and ghouls for your attention.

Meanwhile, scientists and arachnid fans are posting their favorite eight-legged images on their websites and social media.

Even Flickr celebrates Arachtober via a photography pool formed in September 2008. "The pool is open! Thanks everyone for participating, spreading the spider love, and making this fun!...This group is similar to a 365 group, the goal is to post spiders to Flickr daily during October. When you shot them is less important...Post what you have. You can either post them daily till you run out, spread them out every few days, or save them till Halloween week for Spider Blitz. Spiders are especially popular around then."

Happy Arachtober! Here are three jumping spiders that you can love, or try to love....Then on March 14 you celebrate Save a Spider Day.

The next seminar hosted by the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology promises to be of great interest to bee scientists, beekeepers, and all those who want to learn more about honey bees.

An international leader in honey bee research--Juliana Rangel Posada--will speak on "Don't Compromise: Food Lipid Content Shapes Protein-Lipid Regulation in Honey Bee (Apis Mellifera) Nurses" at 4:10 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 7 in 122 Briggs Hall. Her seminar also will be broadcast on Zoom. The Zoom link: 
https://ucdavis.zoom.us/j/95882849672.

Can't attend or Zoom in? Her seminar will be archived on the Entomology and Nematology seminar website at https://entomology.ucdavis.edu/seminars.

"Regulating nutrient intake is a fundamental and multidimensional challenge for all animals," Posada says in her abstract. "Typically, animals prioritize macronutrient intake, and we know much about protein-carbohydrate regulation. In contrast, we know relatively little about protein-lipid regulation, especially among palynivores like bees that feed on food (pollen) that has high, but variable, protein and lipid content."

"Using a Geometric Framework or nutrition experimental approach, we show that nurse honey bees (Apis melliera) maximized their protein-lipid intake on diets that had a 3:2 protein:lipid ratio and that it was lowest on highly lipid-based diets," she continued. "In choice experiments with nutritionally complementary diets, bees self-selected a protein-based diet. However, total consumption was suppressed when a lipid-biased food was present. Our collective results suggest bees actively regular the intake of both protein and lipid, but that lipid regulation is particularly strict. Our findings have implications for honey bee and palynivore ecology, and nutritional ecology more broadly."

Posada, a native of Colombia, South America, holds a bachelor's degree in ecology, behavior and evolution, cum laude (2004), from UC San Diego. She received her doctorate in neurobiology and behavior from Cornell University in 2010, studying with major professor Tom Seeley, and then served as a National Science Foundation biology postdoctoral fellow at North Carolina State University, Raleigh. 

Posada joined the TAMU College of Agriculture and Life Sciences faculty in January 2013. She is active in the Texas Beekeepers Association and has addressed dozens of beekeeping associations across the United States and internationally.

Posada and her research group at Texas A&M found that a widely used pesticide—the miticide amitraz—used to protect honey bees from mite infestation, has an effect on mating among the queens. (See Entomology Today, a publication of the Entomological Society of America)

She's also an outstanding teacher, the recipient of TAMU awards and the 2023 Excellence Achievement Award in Teaching, Southwestern Branch of the Entomological Society of America.

Nematologist Amanda Hodson, assistant professor, is coordinating the ENT seminars. The full list is here. For more information or for technical issues, contact Hodson at akhodson@ucdavis.edu.

Resources:

• Interview with a Social Insect Scientist, published in 2017 by Insectessociaux
• Biology of Mating, National Honey Show Lecture Series 2015, YouTube 
• Bee Happy: Maximizing Honey Bee Characteristics for Health Bees, Finding Genus Podcast
• Posada lab Facebook page:  facebook.com/TAMUhoneybeelab

How many kids have you seen running and screaming every time they encounter an insect?

Maybe not so much when it's a lady beetle (aka ladybug), or a butterfly.

But Madagascar hissing cockroaches and stick insects sometimes get many a "yecch" before they get a definite "yay!" 

Scientists at the Bohart Museum of Entomology at UC Davis mean to change all that. Their open houses are free and family friendly. At their Sept. 28th open house, themed "Museum Fundamentals 101" or "Museum ABCs: Arthropods, Bohart and Collecting," the scientists fed the curiosity of  kids and adults alike. The event drew some 300 visitors, ranging from toddlers to senior citizens. 

The participants were introduced to how to collect, pin, identify and label insects. The children especially delighted in examining specimens under a microscope, and watching stick insects in the live petting zoo crawl up their arms.

A beaming Thea Schmidt, 4, of Folsom wore a butterfly dress that featured the striking Western tiger swallowtail, Papilio rutulus.

Elliot Sauder, 7, of Sacramento, a longtime lover of all things bugs, wore an equally striking T-shirt printed with "Giant Stag Beetle, Lucanus elaphus," and an image of the beetle.

Elliot shared a microscope with his sister, Sutton, 9, as their mother, Dr. Candice Sauder, a UC Davis Health surgeon, watched. "Elliot has loved bugs since he was 3 when he wanted to be a bug vet," she said.

UC Davis doctoral alumna Fran Keller, a professor at Folsom Lake College, a UC Davis entomology lecturer, and a Bohart research associate, said it well when she discussed the importance of insect museums:

"The Bohart insect library collection is priceless and provides a look into the ecosystems of the past while also providing an example of how habitat loss reduces or potentially wipes out the insect diversity in an area. Insect museum collections are just as important and valuable as history and art collections, but instead of cultural history, they document the natural history of not only our backyards, but also the natural history of our planet. Insects play an important role in every habitat."

The Bohart Museum, founded in 1946 by UC Davis professor Richard "Doc" Bohart (2013-2007), houses a global collection of eight million insect specimens. It is located in Room 1124 of the Academic Surge Building, 455 Crocker Lane, UC Davis campus. In addition to the petting zoo, it includes an insect-themed gift shop stocked with t-shirts, hoodies, books, posters and jewelry, among other items.

Bohart served as its first director. The second: His former graduate student Lynn Kimsey, now UC Davis distinguished professor emerita. She directed the museum from 1999 to Feb. 1, 2024 when the new director Professor Jason Bond, took the reins. He is the Evert and Marion Schlinger Endowed Chair, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology, and associate dean, UC Davis College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.  

The next open house, themed "Specialized Predators of Insects," is set from 1 to 4 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 2.  Featured will be two doctoral students who study predators: Christofer Brothers of the Stacey Combs lab, who researches dragonflies, and Emma Jochim of the Jason Bond lab, arachnids. They will present talks from 1 to 1:30 p.m. in a Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology classroom (next door to the Bohart Museum). Visitors will then gather in the Bohart Museum for more activities from 1:30 to 4 p.m. 

"There will be live arachnid feedings on the hour, hands-on activities, and carnivorous plants for sale," said Tabatha Yang, education and outreach coordinator.

Can you visit the Bohart Museum at other times? Yes. Free public walk-ins take place on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 1 to 4:30 p.m.  See more on the website or contact bmuseum@ucdavis.edu for more information.